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Main Junction: ASK WHITECHAPEL - the You Can Haz Help Now thread (Jan 9th - Feb 5th)

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  1.  (10439.1)
    Bring us your ontological queries. Bring us your relationship problems and the courage to be laughed at. Bring us your need to know that word, y’know the one, it’s on the tip of your tongue, what the fuck is that word, oh god oh god.
    Bring us your yearning for solutions to mathematical dilemmas, beer-related uncertainties, genitalia-piercing indecision and demands for perspective. Bring us embarrassing questions regarding the removal of blunt objects from nether regions – it’s for a friend, honest – and bring us probing global challenges about How Those Other Guys Live.

    Bring us research enquiries, cultural quandaries, opinion-baiting on relevant world events and Shit You’ve Always Wondered About.

    Ask Whitechapel – anything.

    And Whitechapellers? Be a brick and answer back, eh?

    INSTRUCTIONS:

    When posing a question, be sure and include a representative #hashtag. When answering a question, head your answer with the same tag.

    An example:

    Q. What is the true nature of the threat posed by the #UrethralAttackMaggots?

    A. #UrethralAttackMaggots.
    Horror, horror, only horror, pure horror, unmitigated horror, constant and endless horror, for those who Fail To Follow Instructions.
    •  
      CommentAuthorOsmosis
    • CommentTimeJan 9th 2012
     (10439.2)
    Back in the last thread, Oddbill sed:

    "#tablet

    All "tablets" at the 150 or below range are cheap shit. The Nook Color is an okay color eReader that does some tablet-like things, but it is in no way even close to an actual tablet computer. The only way to make it even get near that is to root it and run a more standard version of the android os and really, does your wife want to fiddle with buggy custom android builds or does she want to use a tablet? I have no direct experience with the Kindle Fire, but I suspect it is much the same, without the android.

    You cannot buy a real, functional, tablet for less than $500. You don't want to buy anything that calls itself a tablet that costs less than that. It will not do what you want it to do, and you'll then have wasted the money you spent on it.

    Honestly, and this is coming from a lifetime Windows user who hates the apple ecosystem and is not a fan of deranged apple fandom, if you want a tablet, save up and get an ipad. The ipad works wonderfully, and is still the format defining machine. If you can't buy an ipad right now, just don't buy a tablet. Wait. Either you'll be able to afford one later, or someone will come out with a decent non-ipad tablet (this second thing hasn't happened yet)."


    Sadly I have come to the same conclusion. I have been looking at tablets for some time, as I want something to do lightweight mobile computing as well as be able to comfortably read PDFs from Dropbox on the move. I haven't seen anything that looks credible that doesn't cost iPad money, and, if you're going to pay iPad money, nothing matches iPad quality. So, as far as I can see, the options are: 1) Don't buy a tablet 2) Buy an iPad. My phone is Android, so I really would prefer to be able to use similar apps across both, but I've come to the same conclusion as Oddbill.
    •  
      CommentAuthorBeamish
    • CommentTimeJan 9th 2012
     (10439.3)
    Thanks, folks. I will pass this information along.
  4.  (10439.4)
    #Tablets

    I think the question is: what exactly does she want a tablet for? Because the stock Nook is more than capable of doing web-browsing (with flash), e-mail, movies, reading, and some light weight touchscreen gaming.
    •  
      CommentAuthorBeamish
    • CommentTimeJan 9th 2012
     (10439.5)
    Primarily games and Internet.
  6.  (10439.6)
    #TABLET

    I'd try to find a used iPad1 from someone who's upgraded to the iPad2. Or if you can wait a bit, the iPad3 is probably coming in a couple months, which will further drive down prices on the iPad1... probably not all the way down to $150 (the base model is selling for about $300 these days), but at that point the bang-for-the-buck will be pretty darn good. They have almost no moving parts, so short of scratches on the screen, a used one is about as good as it was when new.
  7.  (10439.7)
    Is it the screen size you need? For games and internet browsing, I used an ipod touch for a couple of years. Yep also read ebooks on it too, and had a bluetooth keyboard for longer typing etc. (there's a cmd code doc out there for keyboard shortcuts which is good too, but probably a bit beyond general surfnturf lol)

    Its only with needin to get my arse in gear workwise (and a present) that I have gone back to having a laptop for general use, and even then its a diddy.

    If you want a larger screen, I'd second the find an ipad1 suggestion. Ipad3 is still a while off though, whatever the rumours sites are starting to say its likely a phone reboot is going to come along before that, and there are updates to laptop models due along as well. (I don't *know* any of this for sure, but do have good reasons for my conjecture, rofl).
  8.  (10439.8)
    http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/ is a good resource for figuring out when to expect product updates from Apple.
    • CommentAuthorFlabyo
    • CommentTimeJan 11th 2012
     (10439.9)
    #Lumia

    Thinking about finally getting myself a smartphone, and partly because of where I work I'm thinking a Windows one.

    Anyone got any thoughts on the Nokia Lumia? Or am I being silly and should just suck it up and get an iPhone?
  10.  (10439.10)
    #Lumia

    Windows phones are terrible. They're as locked in to the Zune ecosystem as iPhones are to iTunes, which makes updating/syncing/etc. a spectacular pain in the ass, and the Metro UI is hideous and not at all conducive to easy navigation of applications and such. We've recently started working with them at my office, and while it took me all of 20 minutes to root and install a custom ROM on my G2 (literally done during my morning break on the day I got it), it's taken upwards of an hour or two to install retail updates on the retail WP7 phones. (And that's not even touching on setting the damn things up for development...)

    Get an Android phone or an iPhone.
    •  
      CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2012
     (10439.11)
    #Filekompreshun

    Does anyone know a good way to compress a 5-page PDF to less than 2MB without it looking like complete dogshit?
  12.  (10439.12)
    Zip? about all I can think of, short of pulling the thing to pieces and getting it reworked... Sorry
  13.  (10439.13)
    #Filekompreshun

    It depends on what the content of the PDF is. If it's all plain text, no problem. If it's bitmapped full-color images that you want to be printable at 600dpi... problem.
    •  
      CommentAuthorAlan Tyson
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2012 edited
     (10439.14)
    Yeah... it's the latter, though I think 72dpi should be just fine.

    I've managed to get it down to about 3.3MB by running it through about five different compression methods, but I'm still getting feedback people who are apparently using connections so slow that downloading anything about the kilobyte level makes their computer wet the bed.
    •  
      CommentAuthortaphead
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2012
     (10439.15)
    #Filekompreshun

    If you're doing it on Illustrator or somesuch, flattening the layers and removing the editability options helps quite a bit.
  16.  (10439.16)
    #Filekompreshun

    if you're using Acrobat writer, have you tried saving as a Postscript file and then running through Adobe Distiller on the 'screen' setting? That's my method of last resort. Alternatively, you could try generating a new pdf by selecting 'pdf' as the printer and saving the file with lower resolution settings, which often works.
    •  
      CommentAuthoroddbill
    • CommentTimeJan 12th 2012
     (10439.17)
    #Filekompreshun

    If you are dealing with 5 pages of comics or illustration that are basically just full page jpegs inside a PDF shell... why bother with the PDF? Why not just pass along 5 jpegs at 72dpi?
    •  
      CommentAuthorTF
    • CommentTimeJan 13th 2012 edited
     (10439.18)
    Oh Mighty Whitechapel! I know nothing and Google is being unfriendly!

    I have a query surrounding #Hiring a Freelance animator

    Is it possible to hire (and not embarrassing to query) a flash animator to create a 2-3min narrative cartoon based on a script and rough storyboard I would provide for a price ceiling of around thousand dollars?

    My hope would be to get something in the style/quality of Skunk Fu:-



    Is this possible? Am I mad for even considering such a thing?


    Any other thoughts relating to the creation of an indi-short animation would be welcome - even ball park costs of Korean/ Indian studios.

    Thanks.
    •  
      CommentAuthorglukkake
    • CommentTimeJan 13th 2012
     (10439.19)
    #hiring a freelance animator

    The Animation World Network forums are a great place to start checking around to learn about pricing. Check out their business section: http://forums.awn.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4. You'll be most likely to find someone who can give you a proper quote than what I'm about to tell you. This book also came up with discussions about Flash production: http://books.google.com/books?id=q3o-6SQVNykC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=animate+flash+per+week&source=bl&ots=hlUWg3y-7a&sig=cN5Ouh3CILG4CyoEVAvycBF_l-A&hl=en&sa=X&ei=i20QT6GEAoHn0QGA0J2sAw&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=animate%20flash%20per%20week&f=false

    The thing to understand when hiring a freelancer is just exactly how much time an animation can cost. Something slick, you might find can only be animated at a rate of 30-35 seconds a week - remember, there are backgrounds to build, characters to move gracefully, lip & action syncs to sound and more that goes on in every single frame. So bear this in mind when thinking about how often your show is going to be released - something like that for Cartoon Network is made by a studio of artists, so a single freelancer is not going to do that in the same time frame. Industry standards tend to be $10,000/minute for a TV-quality 2-D show, from what I've heard - and that's generally covering a small studio of folks. Obv, you can hire individuals for less & who can do a leaner job in less time, so it's the old cheap/fast/well scenario. Outsourcing to India/Korea has its own rates of course - there are lots of foreign studios posting/spamming on the AWN so you can dig through there to find something legit.
    •  
      CommentAuthorGreasemonkey
    • CommentTimeJan 13th 2012 edited
     (10439.20)
    #ArtSchoolsToronto

    Okay, a two-parter.

    I've decided I need some formal art training. I've been drawing and painting for a little over thirty years, teaching myself by trial and error, and I've reached that point where my paintings are starting to suck whenever I try to push in a new direction. Clearly I've reached the limit of what I can learn on my own. So, my questions are as follows:

    1) Is art school worth it, in terms of developing style and technique, or does it just push students toward conformity and conventionality?

    2) Can you recommend a good art school in Toronto?

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